A few seasons back, I saw a Mad Men scene that seemed ridiculous. After a family picnic, Jon Hamm’s character casually shook out the picnic blanket, tossing paper plates, napkins, and assorted detritus to the wind. I thought oh, ha, the 60s, people were so ignorant. Less than 24 hours later, I drove behind a car whose passenger threw a plastic wrapper out the window.
I regularly see lit cigarettes thrown out of cars. As my previous profilee, Mark Armen, has pointed out, butts are the number one roadside litter, so everyone has seen them get thrown out. After so many trillions, are we inured to them?
Here’s where I must admit to a raging case of hypocrisy. You see, I used to smoke. Off and on in high school, college, and a while after that. (My parents don’t know about this, so please don’t tell them.) And I remember putting cigarette butts out wherever I felt like it, including the beach. After all, it was sand; it was like one big ashtray. I know now how disgusting that is, but at the time, I didn’t think about it. Or if I did give it a passing thought, I was one of those people who thought butts were biodegradable.
So after talking to Danielle, after joining Sara for a beach clean-up, and after interviewing Mark, creator of the BaitTank cigarette butt collector featured here previously, I realized I had to do something to make up for my past behavior. An amends, if you will.
First I tried to figure out the number of butts I littered. Roughly a pack a week thrown out on the ground or in the sand = 20 cigarettes. 20 X 2 years = 2080. It’s been so long since I’ve been a rabid anti-smoker that I really have no idea if that number is low or high, so I went with it.
I told Danielle and Sara of my plan, and they were as supportive and encouraging as you’d expect. However, Mark Armen said, “Wait, don’t you need to pick up two butts for every one you threw out? Isn’t that how penance works?” Maybe, but as I am not a Catholic, I wouldn’t know about that. I stuck with my original plan.
I learned a few things on my first day out:
- People are kind of freaked out to see me cleaning up cigarette butts. They avoid looking at me, as if I’m a crazy person. Or maybe as if I’d ask them to join me.
- I should wear two gloves, not one. Somehow the bag-holding hand gets just as dirty as the crap-picking hand. Also, two gloves serve to look slightly less insane. See above.
- I should pull back my long hair into a ponytail. Bending over a hundred times or so, without having a clean hand to push it back behind my ears, was a pain in the ass, and also added to the crazy lady look by the end of the half hour. Seriously, the bangs were right out of “There’s Something About Mary.” Which I didn’t know til I got home and saw myself in the mirror.
- People can be really cool.
I was working a greenway between the street and the sidewalk, next to an art store a few blocks from my home. A kind valet parker saw me working, and, perhaps since he’d seen me previously, looking normal-er, he wasn’t scared to talk to me. He showed me the cause of the greenway litter. In the alley behind the art store, the dumpster was located under their loading dock. Unfortunately, there was a gap between the dumpster and the dock, so every time the workers threw out the trash, some fell to the ground. Additionally, the dumpster’s lid was always open, so wind would blow light debris away, onto the little greenway of grossness.
So after picking up butt 200, I screwed up my courage and stepped inside the art store to ask to speak to the manager about the dumpster problem. He stepped up, and looked at me a little warily. Note to self: take off single yellow glove, throw out bag of refuse, and comb unruly Mary hair before trying to talk to anyone other than self. Anyway, he heard me out politely, and said he would tell the GM (General Manager) about it. I asked who that was, and if I could get the number. I also offered to leave my name and number, but was declined, again politely. So I left, with Jeff the GM’s card, thinking, oh great I’m going to have to do my spiel all over again tomorrow when he’s on his shift and he’s going to be a jerk, and should I come in or do it by phone, which will be more effective? And are Saturdays busy? He probably won’t be able to take the call, ugh, why do I bother… Stuff like that.
So the next morning, bright and early at 11:00 a.m., I called up GM Jeff, who quickly interrupted my pleasant prepared statement with, “I got the message loud and clear.” So the other fellow had spoken with him after all. That was nice to hear. Maybe looking like a kook helped, who knows. But “loud and clear?” Did that mean I should shut up already? I steeled myself for a brush-off, but instead he went on to say that he already cleaned up the area, and was looking into ways to make sure it doesn’t happen anymore. He said their underground garage has a similar problem with customers littering, even though there are two trashcans down there. He was going to look into that too.
When I mentioned that his workers smoke in front of the building with no trashcans nearby, and wondered if that was a city issue, he said he hadn’t thought of that before, but he’d call the city about installing a can on that corner, and tell the workers to use it.
When I noted that the Styrofoam peanuts they discard could instead be collected and taken over to the shipping store in the mini-mall across the street for reuse, he said he’d set aside a big bag for them right away. I offered to do it, and save his employees the hassle, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He added the company doesn’t use them much anymore anyway; they use the more popular plastic bags full of air now. That’s a battle for another day.
When I started to ask whether all the cardboard boxes in the dumpster could be recycled instead, he noted that when he first started working there he wanted to recycle the cardboard too, but then saw that local guys were coming by several times a day to go through the trash and recycle them, so he left it to them.
I had been practically writhing in dread of calling GM Jeff to follow through with all of this, expecting a fruitless talk that would fill me with resentment. Instead, he was so responsive, even proactive, that he made my day. I swear I nearly got weepy.
I offered to help with all of it, in any way I could, and he took my name, number, and email to get in touch, but frankly, he seems to have things completely in hand. I want to go buy art supplies (from Blick Art Materials, also available online!) just to thank him.
I could go off on a tear here about conscious capitalism, and how employees who show they care and make a concerted effort to solve problems are a company’s most valuable assets, and if corporations only understood that ultimately it was a lot cheaper to act decently than to greenwash people with advertising and lobbying and lawsuits, we’d all happily support them, but that’s already there in the subtext, right?
Besides, I have to tend to my own hypocrisy before attacking anyone else’s. Next up, my clean-up diary.
